Connecting the dots for a Digital India: Amit Sharma

This is an opportune moment to pause and assess India’s rapid growth story in the light of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives like Digital India and to explore the achievements and challenges that face us.ETTelecom | August 14, 2017, 09:53 IST

The Government is observing this Independence Day as ‘Sankalp Parva’, or the Day of Resolve. It has asked the people of India to dedicate themselves to social causes and to share their ideas for creating a new India. This is an opportune moment to pause and assess India’s rapid growth story in the light of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiatives like Digital India and to explore the achievements and challenges that face us.

Digital India is one of most ambitious projects in the world, seeking to digitally connect all of India’s villages and gram panchayats by broadband internet, promote e-governance and transform India into a connected knowledge economy.

By 2019, which is just two years away, the Government envisages that 2,50,000 Indian villages will enjoy broadband connectivity and universal phone connectivity. This is a truly visionary and commendable initiative.India is at the cusp of massive transformation. We recently beat China to the enviable position of the fastest growing economy in the world.

India's mobile telephony growth in the first decade of this century was the talk of the world and the data growth today is again a world record. With 250 million+ smartphone users already and 4G feature phone prices dropping below Rs.2000, there will be a significant increase in 4G penetration even in rural areas.

At ATC, we are working in sync with the Government’s initiative to connect villages. We have initiated the concept of a “Digital Village”. We use our tower sites, which have electricity, security and internet backhaul, to promote e-Education and digital literacy in rural areas to children and adults in 60 villages. This project enables children to access computers with self-learning software and internet access at village tower sites and schools, thus providing self-learning opportunities. This has led to a significant, measurable improvement in their academic performance.

As part of the community outreach program, ATC provides the schools with solar energy and sanitation facilities to provide a more hygienic environment for the children. The digital learning centers are aimed at providing adults elementary computer literacy and skill development, needed for them to access eGovernance and other rural economy related sites.

We already have such sites operational in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, and it is our endeavor to commission many more such sites. Both these programs, we believe, have tremendous potential to fuel economic growth in rural areas.

Change of the magnitude that is envisaged does not come easy, given the wide diversity of demographics, usage patterns, accessibility and even digital literacy. This challenge is exacerbated by the significant developmental gap between urban and rural areas today. The current overall Internet penetration in the country stands around 30 per cent; while urban India currently has 60 per cent Internet penetration the rural penetration is poor.

With 70 per cent of the population staying in rural areas, the rural market will be a key growth driver in the coming years only if the Digital Divide between urban and rural can be bridged. The journey to a fully Digital India requires massive investments in urban and rural telecom/IT infrastructure. Globally such ambitious projects only work if there is close cooperation between the federal, state and private sectors in deploying Telecom/Broadband infrastructure in a phased manner and coordinated manner.

The unprecedented growth of data demand has created significant challenges for the Telecom sector. Today networks are choked and it is increasingly clear that network capacities need to be considerably enhanced for users to derive optimal benefits from Digital India.

The Indian telecom tower industry has been a key partner in the growth of the Telecom Sector but faces challenges in making the investments needed to support the infrastructure needed by Digital India. The Industry has been accorded ‘Infrastructure’ status, given its critical role in the development of the telecom sector and the growth of the overall economy of the country, but the benefits provided to other infrastructure grantees are yet to be extended to this sector.

Telecom infrastructure providers find rural towers quite uneconomic. In most countries, towers are built in rural areas with government subsidy and support. Governments make land, rights of way and infrastructure available for rural mobile networks at low or no cost. In India a multitude of authorities will need to be on the same page to accelerate growth in the deployment of towers and provision of “last mile” voice/data connectivity in rural India.

Additionally, there is a need for authorities to strengthen the security framework for telecom infrastructure assets such as fiber and telecom towers deployed across the country as these are prone to random sealing, vandalism and diesel theft.

The ‘Digital India’ plan and the vision of creating Smart Cities can be fully realized only when the infrastructure needed for critical ‘last mile’ connectivity is in place. Digitization is now a necessity. We have to seize the moment! Government, private players and society, acting in sync, can transform India’s socio-economic dynamics and usher in a future of immense possibilities.

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